May 2015 – Goals in Review

I can’t believe it is already June… I’m pretty sure I’ve said that at the beginning of all of my goals in review posts… It’s crazy how fast time seems to be flying by.

My goals posts always end up being really long, so I apologize in advance. If you are just joining me on my journey to a better me, please check out my goals page for the list of my 2015 goals and links to the posts where I have explained them in detail. But now, let’s get down to the review…

Financial Goals

1. Budget: I’ll post my budget review for May and preview for June tomorrow. But basically, I’m happy with the progress, even if it is really just monitoring spending for now without actually limiting any. And, I am still in love with the YNAB software. Who doesn’t love pretty graphs!

2. Savings (or planned spending): The wedding fund will start to decrease this month as we start paying for things… The home reno fund got a big jump in May from my tax refund, and we should reach the $7000 pretty early on here (like maybe this week), but then we’ll spend it… Once that is done, we will return to saving for my fiance’s education, and we will have to review what the next home reno goal is. But all-in-all, I’d say this is going great!

3. RRSP: At the end of April, I increased my goal for my RRSP to $48,000. I haven’t increased my contributions at all (still a measly $200/month), but the market has been working in my favour and I’m almost at $48,000 already. Yay for market increases! I think I will up this goal again to $50,000. I know it is not a huge increase, but since most of my increase has been thanks to the market and not my own contributions, I want to keep the bar attainable with increases to my contributions and any down turn on the market.

4. TFSA: Another month of zero action on my TFSA. Bad Me!

5. Emergency Fund: According to my budget in YNAB, we have an emergency fund, and we’ve increased it to $3000. However, it is hard for me to really see this since it is spread out between various accounts. I’m not sure if I need to rearrange the accounts to show this better, or if I can be happy with just knowing that it is there somewhere… I think when we get a bit more in there, I’ll want it to do some work for us, so I’ll want to make sure that it is somewhere where it can make some money. Until then I’ll just leave it there… but in terms of the goal… according to YNAB, progress has been made!

Professional Goals

1. Exam: As I mentioned last week, I got my results back and I passed my exam! There are still a few paperwork things to sort out now, but since those weren’t technically a part of my goal… I’m saying this goal has been completed!

2. Productivity: This has been a horrible month in terms of productivity for the most part… however, this past week (since I did my post about getting out of a funk) has actually been quite good, so I feel positive about the future of my productivity at work and getting to work on time.

3. Work Related Reading: Zilch. Nothing. Nada. As much as I want to improve my knowledge at work, my schedule and work load is such that I am spending extra time just keeping up with my work, so until things slow down and all my other life goals and commitments quiet down, I’m not sure I’ll be able to put any effort towards this goal. This one may be a goal that I decide is not worth pursuing this year… or at least not to the same scope that I had originally thought.

Health & Fitness Goals

1. Weight Loss: Ugh… Still up a little. And only 2 months until my wedding deadline. It will be tough with all the festivities leading up to the event, plus many other summer parties and weddings… Might need to up my fitness in order to compensate for all the goodies.

2. 10k in under 1 hour: Technically, I ran 10k in under an hour during my half marathon attempt last weekend, but I’m not sure if I can count that one… My running buddy and I are signed up for another 10k later this month, so we will see if we can get under 60 minutes this time. A couple weeks of hardcore training to get that done I guess.

3. 1/2 marathon in 2 hours: My first attempt last weekend was a bust. But I’ll register for one in the fall and keep on training. Oh, and I made a page to keep track of all my running times…

4. Exercise 3 times a week: This was a failure this month. I think this was the first time this year that I failed at this… No wonder my weight is up.

5. Weekly Meal Plan: This is a tough one to judge… I was away for work a lot in May, so that involves mandatory meal planning since I have to pack in all my food to the site I was at. But does that count? I didn’t plan any meals for the fiance… and I doubt he did any meal planning… And that may show in our restaurant portion of our budget… But this past week, since I’ve been home, we did a decent job of meal planning. I’ll call that a success for this month. Now to keep it up!

6. 7 drinks per week: Other than a weekend away for a friend’s bachelorette, I was pretty good this month. Success! I am positive that I will fail on this for the next while…

2. Garden Plan: Success! I planted seeds and they are growing! I posted the layout of my planting, and now that things are growing, I’ll try and post a quick picture of the successful plants! I’m not a green thumb at all, in fact quite the opposite, so don’t expect big things from me… but hey, green things growing is a success in my books!

3. Wedding Planning: I posted about our wedding invites last week. And I’ve been working on a to do list, so maybe it is time for me to get some outside accountability and post some wedding stuff on here… but generally, progress has been made.

Overall May Result: C+

I’m giving myself the same mark as last month. I am glad that I am feeling more positive and am out of my funk that I was in mid-May. And now for all the fun and chaos that comes with summer!

Are you still keeping track of your new year’s goals? How are they looking now that we are almost half way through the year?

These are all my goals for the whole year… so it’s not like I’m going to get everything done in one month… and in hindsight… perhaps some of them were a bit vague or ambitious… but I’ll keep plugging along, because even if I’m not 100% successful all the time, every little bit I do helps me on the journey to be a better me, right?